Marcus Coates: "Ventriloquist" Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, UK

Ventriloquist

27 February – 28 March 2009

Timothy Taylor Gallery
15 Carlos Place London W1K 2EX

Open 10-6pm Mon-Fri; 10-1pm Sat.

Monika Baer - Daniel Baker - Suse Bauer - Tjorg Douglas Beer - Steve Bishop
Marcus Coates - Lucy Coggle - Marcel Duchamp - Armen Eloyan - Philip Guston
Charlie Hammond - Volker Hueller - Jasper Johns - Pil and Galia Kollectiv - Fiona Mackay
Gorka Mohamed - Daniel Pasteiner - Mark Pearson - Mai-Thu Perret - Francis Picabia
Pablo Picasso - Fiona Rae - Robert Rauschenberg - Colin Self - Alan Stanners
Jack Strange - Walter Swennen - Wawrzyniec Tokarski - Jens Ullrich

Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to present Ventriloquist, a group show that links works by
some of the 20th centuryʼs greatest artists with those of a younger generation of established
and emerging talent.

Ventriloquism – the act of stagecraft by which the performer manipulates his or her own voice
so that it appears to come from elsewhere, is also described as the ability to "throw" one's
own voice. However, the term "throwing one's voice" is misleading - implying that a sound's
physical origin has changed, when really the change has been perceptual and
not physical. Taking its title from a work by Jasper Johns included in the exhibition,
Ventriloquist explores how artists use ʻdistancingʼ techniques to mask the author, employ
ciphers and symbols and create alter-egos, fantastical self portraits, animal surrogates or
even new hypothetical realms. It also explores the use of text and language which, through
the influence of Freud, Dada and Surrealism, opened the door to wordplay and games,
multiple meanings and associations.

In Jasper Johnʼs Untitled (Ventriloquist), 1984, the artist uses the voices of others to conjure
up an enigmatic and alternative vision of Americanness: the painting juxtaposes the outline of
Herman Melvilleʼs ʻMoby Dickʼ (channelled through an engraving by Barry Moser) with the
work of the eccentric 19th century Biloxi potter George Ohr, an iconic American figure, who
was hailed mid 20th century as a harbinger of abstraction.

Challenging art rules and upsetting bourgeois sensibilities, Dada and Surrealism introduced
word games and double-entendres to the realm of art. In Duchampʼs L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved,
1965, the artist reworked his famous moustache-sporting Mona Lisa by creating another
version, this time without the facial hair – thereby creating the ultimate ready-made/
appropriationist artwork. The title L.H.O.O.Q. is a phonetic game: when read quickly in
French, it sounds like a sentence that roughly translates as ʻshe has a hot assʼ.

Francis Picabiaʼs Untitled, 1948–50, reveals the influence upon the artist of Nietszcheʼs The
Gay Science, in which the German philosopher extols in poetry and prose the legacy of the
Provençal troubadour tradition and its joyful affirmation of life. Ferociously unconventional
throughout his life and a key participant in Dadaʼs anti-art stance, Picabia, at the end of his
career, returned to graphic abstraction to explore the nature of life and art, fear, joy and love;
strong lines and earthy colour and imagery combine in this primitive and phallic head, strongly
reminiscent of pre-Cycladic and Iberian fertility imagery.

In Docket of Violation, 1954, Robert Rauschenbergʼs collage testifies to another vision of
America constructed through found materials: the docket and the Statue of Liberty conjure
the power and the promise of the land of the free. The exhibition also features Philip Gustonʼs
late figurative work Inside Outside, 1977. Guston employs his personal symbolic language to
create his trademark lugubrious and claustrophobic world; bugs, boots, bottles and trash-cans
all combine to create a stark existential meditation.

In addition, the exhibition includes Mr Foxy, 2008, an endearing anthropomorphic portrait by
the Armenian painter Armen Eloyan, a video by Marcus Coates exploring the thin line
between the human and animal worlds and Monica Baerʼs disintegrating and dissolving
money paintings. Misleading and erroneous self-portraits are provided by Charlie Hammond,
Jack Strange, Fiona Mackay and Volker Hueller, while Suse Bauer presents a symbolic
portrait of Anne Frank. Text plays an important role in laying false trails, with diaristic extracts
from Mai-Thu Perretʼs meta-narrative The Crystal Frontier; and Daniel Bakerʼs mirrored texts
and Lucy Cogglesʼ nonsense spreading ambiguity and confusion. An early Fiona Rae painting
suggests an imaginary pictogram language, while Wawrzyniec Tokarski and Mark Pearboth use strongly associative graphics and text to question traditional power structures.

Matt Stokes: "THE GAINSBOROUGH PACKET, &C." 176, London, UK

THE GAINSBOROUGH PACKET, &C.

Matt Stokes

An exhibition of new works by Matt Stokes
and works from the Zabludowicz Collection

26 February-28 June, 2009

EXHIBITION PREVIEW
Monday 23 February, 7-9pm

176 Prince of Wales Road
London NW5 3PT, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 207 428 8940
www.projectspace176.com

The Gainsborough Packet, &c. is the culmination of Matt Stokes’s residency with 176 and the Zabludowicz Collection. Since March 2008, Stokes has worked within the context of 176, taking into account its architecture, history and relevance to the local area, to produce two new works: The Gainsborough Packet and Club Ponderosa, as well as a display of works selected from the Collection and an artist’s book. During 2008, Stokes also completed a residency at Arthouse in Austin, Texas, which included making the two-channel film installation these are the days, also on show at 176.

As part of his residency, Stokes was also invited to curate a selection of art works from the Zabludowicz Collection to be displayed in relation to his own works.

The Gainsborough Packet is a co-commission with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, where the work will be shown from 4 March-10 May. www.balticmill.com

Darren Banks & Cath Campbell: "The Golden Record" Battersea Arts Centre, London, UK

The Golden Record
Vote for the Representative of the Human Race!
N2O Comedy Festival @ Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill
Wednesday 18th February 8pm
This year at the Edinburgh Festival, artists and comedians came together to re-make Carl Sagan's Golden Record, as launched into space with the Voyager missions in 1977 in an attempt to communicate with intelligent extraterrestrials. You can find full details and images from the exhibition at http://www.myspace.com/goldenrecordedinburgh, which included work by around 150 artists and performers including Kevin Eldon, Bob and Roberta Smith, Paul Foot, Socialist magician Ian Saville, David Godbold, Dan Perjovschi, Michael Kupperman, NY ventriloquist Carla Rhodes and Vice-President of the International Association of Astronomical Artists David A Hardy.

The 2008 edition of The Golden Record featured live comedy husting events during the Edinburgh Festival to elect a Representative for the Human Race, to deliver the keynote address on our behalf to replace the original by Kurt Waldheim. Nine comedians delivered their proposed 15-minute speeches over the Festival in a series of heats – the audience vote decided the winner. The candidates were Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Pappy's Fun Club, Robin Ince, Alex Horne, Jo Neary, New Art Club, Edward Aczel and Simon Munnery.

The winners of those three heats will perform at BAC in this Grand Finale in which it will be decided exactly who will Speak to the Aliens on Our Behalf. They are STEWART LEE, ALEX HORNE and ROBIN INCE. Your vote counts! After a short intro to the project, JOHN HEGLEY will take over to host. Complex machinery will assess audience response to find our elected representative.

Box Office: 020 7223 2223 - tickets £10, (£6 concs)

Cecilia Stenbom: "/sLab IN THE CITY" Sunderland, UK

/sLab IN THE CITY

Friday 20 February until Monday 2 March 2009
Launch event: Thursday 19 February at 5pm

The notion of deliberately placing contemporary art in the public realm to incite diversion and surprise for the passerby has the potential to provoke diverse levels of engagement where people do not necessarily expect, or set out to invite, an artistic encounter.

/sLab, Sunderland’s digital media lab presents a blend of emerging and established artists, working in various mediums, whose practices are currently based in the north east region. Art work will be staged in shop window spaces and public sites throughout the central retail area of Sunderland and will feature video, sound and sculptural installations and performance.

Cecilia Stenbom

Cecilia Stenbom is a Swedish artist currently based in the north east who uses her own image to explore notions of identity and relationships in a mediated world. Through the means of a kind of narcissistic projection into fantastical roles she explores the systems inherent in contemporary culture. The artist presents an installation version of The Protocol, a re-staging of an American infomercial (an imitation of a standard US talk show). The original infomercial has been transcribed and entirely re-enacted and is concerned with selling a book about a weight loss cure; a set of guidelines or protocol explaining how to lose weight without any deprivation or exercise. The work is designed to be consumed by the viewer as background noise that can be engaged with at any given moment. The installation will be staged in a shop window location in The Bridges Shopping Centre.

CIRCA’s Sam Watson and Adam Phillips

Sunderland based artists Sam Watson and Adam Phillips’ work attempts to subvert the familiarity of local landscape through creating unexpected occurrences in alternative locations. The Hope I Can’t Stand is a sound installation which radically alters the geography of the city, by transporting the sound of 36,000 Sunderland football fans from the Stadium of Light into the city centre. On the 13th December 2008 Sunderland AFC earned a 4-0 victory over West Bromwich Albion, in the first home fixture without Roy Keane as manager. Watson and Phillips recorded the sounds of the Stadium of Light, a cultural beacon for people of Sunderland, and will be broadcasting them in a stereo reproduction from the Joplings building, the longest surviving retailer in the city. The Hope I Can’t Stand will be presented on 19th February 2009 from 5pm.

CIRCA’s Michael Gardiner

Sunderland based artist Michael Gardiner presents Grafting, a video installation which focuses upon communicating a personal reflection on the nature of returning to Sunderland after a significant absence. The main protagonist of this project is the familiar look and sound of a seagull. After spending time in various places around the world, the artist has been intrigued by how the differences between one city and the next become more tangible through travel and human experience. The sight and sound of the seagull patrolling the city goes largely unnoticed but is given heightened emotional significance to the returning artist. More than a symbol to demonstrate the geographical cliché of Sunderland as British sea-side town, the seagull is an icon to help convey a dramatic sense of returning to one’s roots and home territory. The installation will be staged in HMV window located in The Bridges Shopping Centre.
Michelle Goulder

Michelle Goulder is a north east based artist whose work is influenced by global issues such as hunger, homelessness and lack of basic facilities. Working mainly in sculpture the artist re-builds and transforms pieces of ready-made and unwanted items and by doing so alters their original and recognised functions. Every day the people of Tbilisi wonder if the lights will come on is a sculptural installation inspired by the artist’s experience of the living conditions of the inhabitants in the city of Tbilisi in Georgia. The labour intensive execution of the wrapping processes the artist has adopted whilst forming the objects, echoes the monotonous and labouring tasks of craftsmen and women in the textiles and manufacturing industries. The installation will be staged in the corner window of Joplings Department Store.

Sophie Beresford

Sophie Beresford is a Sunderland based artist whose practice is concerned with the interlinking factors of culture, spirituality and science; the fusion of these resulting in performance, sculpture, film, painting, drawing and photography. These works are also often ‘designed’ to explode a dynamic for scrutiny, allowing the observer more avenues for perception concerning contemporary social rules and structures. The artist is particularly interested in northern youth culture and her work is fundamentally involved with Makina which is Spanish techno music under the genre umbrella of Rave. Beresford will be presenting Northern Swan, a performance which will respond to a specific track and the particular situation where the work will be delivered. The performance will take place on 19th February after 5pm.

Jennie Brennan & Sarah Rumis of NOVEMBER

Jennie Brennan and Sarah Rumis have founded and are involved in the development of NOVEMBER, an artist’s run initiative located in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland. Their art practices have evolved in parallel, revolving around similar concerns including those of limitation, autonomy, decor and labour. Prow is the first collaboration by Brennan and Rumis resulting from a shared interest in form, substance and territory. Incorporating aspects of pattern, materials and the notion of manual labour, Prow is a new sculptural installation which invites further investigation through the nature of its structure and application of readily available materials. Prow will be staged in a shop window location in Debenhams.

Curated by: Victoria Maddison

/sLab, University of Sunderland, Ashburne House, Ryhope Road, Sunderland, SR2 7EF.
t:0191 5152046 w: www.slab.uk.net e: info@slab.uk.net

Sponsored by Sunderland City Council and supported by the University of Sunderland, The Bridges Shopping Centre, Debenhams, HMV and Joplings Department Store.

Thanks to: Zoe Channing, Alistair Robinson, Sarah King, Nigel Jolly, Peter Belshaw, Andy Pritchard, Richard Hollinshead, Professor Eric Bainbridge, Dr Tim Brennan, Graham Mitchinson, Do Holroyd, Alan Lifton, Graeme Milburn & Sunderland Association Football Club.

image:
Cecilia Stenbom
The Protocol (Installation Version)
2008
HD Video, Photo wallpaper on timer frames, table, 2 x Lights and stands, Flat screen monitor, Box monitor.
400 x 300 x 180 cms (approx) 157.6 x 118.2 x 70.92 inches Film Duration 27 Minutes
CS0053
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Ant Macari: "Rank: Picturing The Social Order 1615-2009" Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, UK

Rank: Picturing The Social Order 1615-2009

Leeds City Art Gallery
14 February – 26 April 2009

This fascinating and unusual exhibition, which looks at how artists have
pictured the shape of society from Renaissance times to the present, opens its
UK tour at Leeds Art Gallery. A society without stratification is barely
imaginable, but how do we picture our own system of hierarchies, of
difference? British writers, political theorists and artists have used numerous
images to picture ‘who we are’: describing us through ‘orders’, ‘estates’,
‘classes’, ‘stations’, ‘degrees’, or ‘ranks’. But only this latter term has kept the
same meaning over six centuries. With over 100 exhibits, new work from
leading contemporary artists and the presentation of new social research from
academics and government agencies, the exhibition will include loans from
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan,
1651, British Museum

Tate, The British Library, British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Arts Council Collection, Working
Class Movement Library, and the Saatchi Gallery, as well as private collections.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 140pp fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Polly Toynbee;
Professor Keith Wrightson, Yale University; Professor Daniel Dorling, Sheffield University; Dr Gordon

Image details: Abraham Bosse and Thomas Hobbes '1660 print 'Leviathan',
on loan from British Museum
Fyfe, Keele University; and its curator Alistair Robinson from the Northern Gallery for Contemporary
Art, Sunderland

images: Ant Macari 2009
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

http://www.leeds.gov.uk/artgallery/Leeds_Art_Gallery/2009_Exhibitions.aspx

Cath Campbell: "Drawings: A-Z" Museu da Cidade, Lisbon, Portugal

Drawings: A-Z
5th February - 29th March 2009

The Colecção Madeira Corporate Services – MCS began to be formed in the second half of 2002, through the initiative of its directors, Rosana Rodrigues, who lives in Funchal, and Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, a Brazilian collector who resides in Lisbon. For this project, they invited the Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa, who was has a great experience with private and corporate collections; he is also the curator of the Colecção Teixeira de Freitas. Pedrosa is an independent curator based in São Paulo, and was the adjunct curator of the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo in 1998, curator at the Museu de Arte da Pampulha in Belo Horizonte, from 2001 to 2003, and is currently a curator at InSite 2005 in San Diego and Tijuana.

The Colecção MCS focuses on contemporary drawing. Drawing has been chosen considering the remarkable reinvigoration it has enjoyed in the past few years in the international production. A number of recent exhibitions and publications testify to the renewed interest in the medium – such as “Drawing Now” (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002), “International Paper” (UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2003), “Vitamin D” (Phaidon Press, forthcoming publication). The main focus of Colecção MCS consists of drawings produced over the last ten years by artists born since the sixties, and that is the outline from which the collection and the exhibition may provide a rich and varied panorama. Colecção MCS also develops a second focus, with artists from the 1970s, a group that is still being constructed in the collection and has therefore been excluded from this exhibit. The Colecção MCS concentrates on artists from the Americas and Europe, with a significant number of Brazilians and Portuguese. In this context, the collection includes artists with quite solid careers on the international circuit (such as Francis Alÿs, Maurizio Cattelan, Mona Hatoum, Ilya Kabakov, Guillermo Kuitca, Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, Gabriel Orozco and Julião Sarmento), artists whose drawing is a fundamental reference for the contemporary discussion of the medium (such as Franz Ackerman, Joseph Grigley, Julie Mehretu, Dave Muller and Raymond Pettibon), renowned artists whose work in drawing is limited or little known (such as Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Olafur Eliasson and Vik Muniz), alongside younger or emerging figures (such as Brian Alfred, Ryoko Aoki, Marcelo Cidade, Paul McDevitt, Gabriel Vormstein and Carla Zaccagnini). The collection takes on a very active strategy of acquisitions, and although it is little over two years old, the Colecção MCS already includes 88 artists and over 200 works. The works in the collection are usually exhibited in the offices of Madeira Corporate Services, in Funchal.

The title of the exhibition, “Drawings: A-Z”, from Abdessemed to Zaccagnini, refers to the truly panoramic view that the exhibition wishes to present to the public. In this sense, a certain glossary of contemporary drawing (necessarily incomplete) is constituted, encompassing multiple trends, genres, aspects and techniques developed by artists all over the world: figurative or abstract drawings, or those using written language; drawings with references to conceptual or processual art; drawings informed by political or feminist issues; related to architecture, to design or to cartography; collages, watercolours, gouaches and Indian ink drawings.

The aim of the exhibition is also to show to the public a unique collection initiative in Portugal carried out by a private company. A catalogue will be published afterwards with a text by Adriano Pedrosa and reproductions of a selection of the most important works in the Collection.

Wolfgang Weileder: "Le Terme e La Sirena", gallery Ciocca Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy

Wolfgang Weileder

Le Terme e La Sirena

From 5th February to 9th April 2009

Opening on Thursday 5th of February at 6:30 pm

On Thursday 5th of February the gallery Ciocca Arte Contemporanea will be inaugurating a solo show of the German artist Wolfgang Weileder, with a compilation of black and white and color photographs, that document and summarize his artistic research during the last year.

The show complete the work started with the project Le Terme, a time based site-specific sculpture performed during last October in Piazza Oberdan, and inspired by Diurno Venezia: a derelict 1920's public bathhouse situated directly beneath the square.

The project, simultaneously constructed and de-constructed, was recorded using photographic cameras , strategically positioned around the sculpture. This process produced five black and white photographs, that ultimately reveal the work's production and the only complete view of the replica of Diurno Venezia. Images that are the ghost of the architecture already vanished.

Two color photographs describe this event with a particular technique: the image is composed by thin vertical strips, that are the same part of the same shot, during different moments of the project.

The exhibition also includes four photographs concerning the Slapende Meermin project (that means "sleeping mermaid") realized in Leuven Belgium, and inspired by one of the historical building of the city, name called "mermaid" from the café. The sculpture was a full-scale copy of the façade of this building turned by 90 degrees, appearing like a physic manifestation of the building's shadow.

Wolfgang Weileder's work, both architectural and photographic, explores the borders between temporary and permanent architecture, founding a connection between past, present and future.

http://www.rossanaciocca.it

Laura Lancaster and Rachel Lancaster: "Day after Day after Day" Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle, UK

“Day after Day after Day”

Special Preview: 4th February, 7-11pm
5th February - 1st March (open alongside cinema events + Sat 7th February, 11am-6pm)
An exhibition of new work by Laura Lancaster, Rachel Lancaster, Emma McGlaughlin and Flora Whiteley, exploring their preoccupation with collecting and making.
[Exhibition opening with gig/music - bar open, 6pm-end (hallway and bar)

http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/

Marcus Coates: "ALTERMODERN, TATE TRIENNIAL" London, UK

ALTERMODERN: TATE TRIENNIAL
MANIFESTO
POSTMODERNISM IS DEAD

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing

Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

The Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain presents a collective discussion around this premise that postmodernism is coming to an end, and we are experiencing the emergence of a global altermodernity.

Nicolas Bourriaud
Altermodern – Tate Triennial 2009
at Tate Britain
4 February – 26 April 2009

Image:
Marcus Coates
Firebird, Rhebok, Badger and Hare 2008
Photo by Jo Ramirez
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery